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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Dr. Bob Sears: Stealth anti-vaccinationist?

Dr. Bob Sears is the bane of science- and evidence-based pediatricians everywhere. As pediatrician Dr. John Snyder relates, whenever he hears a parent say “I was reading Dr. Sears” or sees a patient in his office holding a copy of Dr. Sears’ The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Choice for Your Child, he knows what’s […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Skepticism/critical thinking

Battling antivaccinationists at FreedomFest

Like so many other skeptics, I just returned from TAM, which, despite all the conflict and drama surrounding it this year, actually turned out to be a highly enjoyable experience for myself and most people I talked to. As I’ve been doing the last few years, I joined up with Steve Novella and other proponents […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Another cell therapy quackery for autism rears its ugly head

Many are the forms of quackery to which autistic children are subjected to. It’s amazing just how many dubious and dangerous treatments (dubbed “biomedical treatments” or “autism biomed”) parents will try in an effort to “recover” their children. Perhaps the most shocking of this quackery that I’ve recently covered is something called “miracle mineral solution” […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Joe Mercola attacks vaccinations again. Film at 11.

Joe Mercola is antivaccine, through and through, and, unfortunately, his website is one of the largest repositories of antivaccine quackery on the Internet. While it’s true that, unlike the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, Mercola doesn’t limit his advocacy of quackery to just antivaccine quackery, he has recently teamed up with Barbara Loe Fisher, […]

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Autism Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Patient-led “clinical trials” versus clinical research (2012 edition)

Dying of cancer can be a horrible way to go, but as a cancer specialist I sometimes forget that there are diseases that are equally, if not more, horrible. One that always comes to mind is amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It is a motor neuron disease whose clinical […]